Since Pandora?s IPO a year ago, the online audio story has been�something of�a�broken record. Pure play audience numbers keep growing (Pandora’s audience more than doubled from April 2011-April 2012) but the revenue growth trajectory, while steep, has yet to produce profitability. This is because ?�unlike the traditional radio world ? audience is expense for online radio with a hefty performance royalty that mounts each time a consumer listens to a song.�Dramatic increases in�mobile�and in-car listening will only continue to skyrocket the tally as we move forward.This catch 22 has�slowed�the shift to digital for traditional radio stations. For nearly a century now broadcast radio has o[...]

South Korean technology giant Samsung on Thursday called rumors it was building a Facebook-like social networking service “groundless.”Rumors started flying Wednesday about the prospect of Samsung creating its own social network after the Korea Times published a report with unnamed sources. It sounded awfully fishy to us from the start, so we didn’t cover it.“There have been inquiries and a few articles claiming that Samsung Electronics is going to offer a Facebook-like service, being developed under a code-name called ?Samsung Facebook,? the company wrote on its Samsung Tomorrow blog. “However this is not true and the rumor is groundless.”On the social[...]

Verizon defends its new 'Share Everything' data plan that would require unlimited data plan customers to pay the full unsubsized iPhone price of $649 to keep their existing plan, among other things[...]

The WWDC keynote came and went with nary a mention of a new iPhone, but that didn’t stop people from ruminating about Apple’s newest mobile juggernaut. Apple’s brass spent much of their time on-stage pulling back the curtains on the latest version of iOS, and now some are claiming that a fairly innocuous (albeit useful) new feature for developers means that an iPhone with a larger screen is barreling down the pipeline.That feature — Auto Layout — appeared briefly in a iOS SDK slide during the keynote, but most of us got too caught up with Siri updates and the swanky new Maps app to pay it much attention. Is it the sort of dead giveaway that iPhone fanatics have[...]

Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia will cut around 10,000 jobs by the end of 2013 in a wide-ranging cost reduction measure, the company announced today.Nokia is in a precarious position now as it tries to offer a smartphone lineup of Windows Phones (like the Lumia 900 in the photo above) after selling Symbian-based phones for many years. In April, the company’s head of sales stepped down after Nokia incurred a $1.7B first quarter loss. The company also showed it was willing to cut marketing costs by frustratingly shrinking its usually big Nokia World event.CEO Stephen Elop will cut around 10,000 positions as well as shut down research and production sites in his largest bid to re-organ[...]